Divorce theft is a common term in the manosphere, but I have noticed that there is some skepticism amongst our feminist guests on this concept (who often use the term in quotes). I suspect they would be very surprised to learn that this is a commonly accepted concept among economists studying the issue of marriage and divorce. It also is at the core of one of feminists’ most cherished fallacies about marriage, the fallacy that divorce is driven by men who dump their wives and trade her in for a newer model once they feel it is to their advantage.

Let us take a look at the family from a contract-theoretical point of view. Before doing so, it is important to define a concept used in contract theory, namely quasi-rents2 . Quasi-rents are defined as “a return to one party to a contract, above what the party could receive if the contract could be dissolved at will at that moment” (Cohen, 1987).

Marriage is intended to be an agreement for life, so it makes sense that during any given period one party or another will be getting more benefit out of remaining married than the other party does. Quasi-rents are the benefits a spouse experiences if the marriage vows are honored. The whole point of marriage is to create a condition of trust where both spouses can work towards the long term goals of the couple. The changing quasi-rents creates a changing incentive to break that trust by divorce or exploitation. Basically, if there is no method to enforce honoring the contract, at any given time one spouse will have the opportunity to hold the other spouse over a barrel. They use the apex fallacy of a husband waiting until he has received the early benefits of marriage and then divorcing his wife as an example:

Let us consider the traditional family as described in Becker (1991). In the traditional family wives focus on domestic production whereas husbands focus on labour market production. Thus, as Cohen (1987) and Parkman (1992, 2002) point out, in the beginning of the marriage the husband will enjoy more quasi-rents from marriage since he can focus on a career while caring less about e.g. childrearing. The wife on the other hand will enjoy more quasi-rents in a later stage of marriage when the children are more able to maintain themselves and she can benefit from the larger family income and/or a higher social status. Thus a husband has a clear incentive to appropriate the wife’s future quasi-rents, by divorcing her unilaterally after having extracted most of his quasi-rent from the marriage. This is called quasi-rent destruction.

While the example is provably the exception, it still is helpful in illustrating the concept. Clearly if a man was able to get away with this he would be rewarded materially for betraying his wife. But divorce theft isn’t the only option available to the spouse which has the other one over a barrel. They could also use this change in fortunes to renegotiate the terms of the marriage in their favor under threat of divorce, which economists call exploitation:

Brinig and Allen (2000) argue that there are two different types of quasi-rent destruction. First of all, quasi-rents could be appropriated within marriage through the renegotiation of the rent distribution. They call this exploitation. Secondly, and more important in this paper, quasi-rent may be appropriated through divorce. This is what they call appropriation. Renegotiation of the rent distribution within marriage may lead to divorce if one of the spouses has too little bargaining power, which leads her or him to perceive divorce as a better alternative to being married and heavily ‘exploited’.

Brinig and Allen may seem familiar to you, because they wrote the paper I quoted in The child support catastrophe (the same paper these authors are citing above). The Brinig and Allen quote I shared from the previous post is right on topic here (emphasis mine):

Our results are consistent with our hypothesis that filing behavior is driven by self-interest at the time of divorce. Individuals file for divorce when there are marital assets that may be appropriated through divorce, as in the case of leaving when they have received the benefit of educational investments such as advanced degrees. However, individuals may also file when they are being exploited within the marriage, as when the other party commits a major violation of the marriage contract, such as cruelty. Interestingly, though, cruelty amounts to only 6% of all divorce filings in Virginia.50 We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long.

What Brinig and Allen found is that children are typically a marriage’s most valuable asset, and that women are using the near guarantee that they will get custody against their husbands.

Making matters worse unilateral no fault divorce laws give the upper hand to whichever party wishes to engage in divorce theft or exploitation, as the authors of the working paper explain:

If only one of the spouses wants to divorce, spouses engage in ‘bargaining in the shadow of the law’ (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979), where the existing law becomes a threat point for one of the spouses. In a legal system with only consensual divorce the spouse not seeking divorce has the bargaining power….

When the law allows for unilateral divorce the bargaining power shifts to the partner seeking divorce, who can always threaten with unilateral divorce (Fella et al., 2004).

Under a consensual system, the process naturally deters the would be divorce thief or exploiter. The shift to unilateral no fault divorce shifts the power to the spouse who wishes to abuse the system. This is bad for marriage as an institution, and therefore bad for children, as Brinig and Allen explain:

The legal ramifications of the no-fault variable are perhaps the most interesting. In the jurisdictions we studied, even taking into account the higher divorce filing rates, women take advantage of the no-fault option more than do their husbands.51 From the woman’s perspective, repealing no-fault laws may cause harm as compared to passing reforms that will make marriages better.52 However, if filing behavior is mostly driven by attempts to exploit the other partner through divorce, tougher laws may be socially more beneficial. Because the custody coefficients were the largest by far, family law reformers may want to concentrate on formulating custody rules that will alter the spouses’ relative gains from marriage. The authors favor custody rules that replicate the patterns in marriage as closely as possible while giving each spouse a meaningful role (i.e., not zero) after divorce, as opposed to either a “winner takes all” rule like “maternal preference” or “primary caretaker” or a presumption of equal joint custody shares. A replication rule would not make either spouse better off divorced than during marriage (Altman, 1996).

Interestingly, the authors of the working paper touch on the issue of declining sexual marketplace power (SMP) for wives as they age. This reduces women’s opportunities to engage in divorce theft and/or exploitation:

Other authors point out that during marriage the sex ratio – the ratio of single women to single men per age cohort – evolves unfavourably over time for women (see Browning et al. (2008), Chapter 1; or Chiappori et al. (2002) who uses the evolution of the sex ratio to identify the distribution rule in the collective model), reducing the outside options for women, and thus further limiting their bargaining power. As Chiappori et al. (2002) point out: when there exists a relative abundance of women, bargaining power and therefore the gains from marriage will shift in favour of the husband. This may in turn affect the behaviour of the husband who might engage in exploitation or appropriation. The figure below clearly shows that from the age of 40 the sex ratio rises steadily indicating relatively more and more single women.

Unfortunately they are laboring under a very limited understanding of the SMP since they lack knowledge of game. They see the changing sex ratio as the cause and not the symptom of women’s changing SMP options. They also assume that men turn around and use their opportunity to engage in divorce theft and exploitation against women as their wives age. We know from Brinig and Allen that who files is a strong indicator of which party is attempting to engage in divorce theft and/or exploitation, and that while divorce rates fall dramatically as wives age women are still initiating divorce twice as often as men. If men were truly taking their turn at divorce theft and exploitation the way women are, we would expect to see divorce rates spike when women reached middle age. We would also expect to witness a corresponding flip in the ratio of initiation with men initiating divorce more often than women. But we don’t see this. What we see instead is steadily declining divorce rates as the potential for women to engage in divorce theft declines, and a constant relationship regarding who initiates divorce. While fewer and fewer women are attempting divorce theft and exploitation as they get older, the pattern remains the same.

117 Responses to The economics of divorce theft and exploitation, and why we should repeal unilateral no fault divorce.

Thing is, as the notion of quasi-rents ought to make clear, it doesn’t really matter if it’s men or women engaging in divorce theft, the existence of no-fault divorce allows the theft.

So re-write the custody/alimony laws. Whoever files for a no-fault divorce gives up custody of the kids and agrees to a certain alimony/child-support burden. The only type of divorce that would allow the filer to keep the kids or recieve support would be an at-fault divorce with a burden of proof on the filer.

ditto Country lawyer. Father custody would work magic on modern marriages. Husbands could then concentrate their energy on productive things, instead of trying to “game” his wife. Pure father custody may be unfair, but in the spirit of the times, it should at least be a 50/50 chance.

no-fault divorce doesn’t seem near as big a problem as automatic mother custody. Other than breast feeding, its hard to imagine that a mother can do significantly better with a child than father. In either case, the child will spend much of their time in day care, while the custodial parent works. Although there is certain to be cases where the ex-wife can leisure all day, living entirely on the divided marital property and child support checks.

long before the modern age of divorce, children did go with the father as society figured that the father’s resources gave the kids the best chance of growing up provided for. With no-fault divorce and automatic custody to the mother, we now have a huge interloper between the father and his children sucking the life out of that relationship. As TFH points out, this interloper effectively gives the father a much higher tax rate.

What to fix? Well the incentives around divorce need to be realigned if we’re interested in lasting marriages. The posters here make a good case for addressing the automatic mother custody issue.

I think that one of the possible solutions for reducing the divorce rate is to make marriage attractive to women. Marriage could equal “trap” in a lot of women’s minds, maybe because it comes with a lot of responsibilities that both men and women are not ready to handle.

However, and maybe Dalrock can clarify this, it seems to me that I’m exaggerating seeing as the majority of women do still get married anyway. If I am right though, it seems like the key is to change women’s high expectations of marriage; in addition to changing the family law court system.

It is already extremely attractive to women, given how much more women want marriage than men. Like most women, you do not consider the man’s well being at all.

No, divorce is extremely attractive to women when they initiate about 70% of them, which is why I agree with you that it must be made much less attractive to women, and I even went so far as in saying that perhaps divorce should be banned (except for special cases).

And if I wouldn’t care about men, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be basically agreeing with everything that’s being said on this site. And I also wouldn’t argue that the family court system must be changed so that it’s more fair to men.

To stay married for a long time takes patience and hard work, we all know how tough relationships can be, and it seems like some women are not willing to put in the effort and prefer to take the easy way out.

There are two ways of looking at “fault” in divorce: the first is who gets blamed in the actual court procedure, and the second is who gets punished.

The present system really is “no-fault divorce” by the first measure. Back in the days of “at-fault” divorce, a lot of effort was spent in the legal system was spent proving who was actually at fault. Who slapped who first? Who stopped sleeping in the shared bed first? Who had an affair first? Etc. It just served to employ private detectives and drag people’s names through the mud in the public court system with unproveable accusations.

However, the present system is entirely “fault divorce” by the second measure. It’s actually “his-fault divorce,” since men lose the most from divorce. They usually lose custody of their children, pay punitive rates of child support that have nothing to do with the needs of the child and lose assets that they (usually making more money than women) earned.

We don’t really want to bring back the concept of “fault” in divorce. What we want is to remove the punishment of men and rewarding of women in divorce.

Unfortunately, campaigning under the slogan “let’s put a fixed cap on child support, give presumtive custody to fathers and divide assets in proportion to earning power” will encite a shrill cry from women. That will ensure that a politician with such a campaign is un-electable.

The process is intractable through the normal political process. The only way for anything to change is for things to collapse in a material way. In the meantime, enjoy your bread and circuses while our culture rots from within.

Let’s say that two guys decide to start a (tech) business. Jack and Jim form a corporation, of which each owns 50%. Both sign invention assignment agreement, etc. 6 years later, Jack decides that he doesn’t want to continue with the enterprise, so he copies all the code he wrote onto a thumb drive and walks across the street to BigCo.

That would never fly, but the interesting thing is that it’s not Jim who’s seen as (directly) wronged — it’s the corporation which has a complaint that Jack failed to live up to his agreements.

Similarly, divorce is best understood as an abrogation of commitment on the part of the filing party … who should, all else equal, be seen as “at fault” for the resultant harm to the family, and who should therefore be required to make restitution of some form. Of course, the filing party may plead good cause for filing, i.e. that the counterparty was not living up to his commitments either — this is why we have courts.

No-fault divorce is not only pernicious on its face (since it reads the life-long commitment right out of the legal definition of marriage), but a subtle indication of the devaluation of the family in the eyes of the law, from an independent, worthwhile entity, to nothing more than a collective term for a group of individuals.

Noteworthy here is that even consensual no-fault divorce is indicative of a decline in the esteem in which the institution of family is held.

I do not believe that “no fault” is an accurate term. A more accurate term for divorce in the US is “men’s fault”, or as greenlander called it “his fault” divorce.

I submit this is the reality feminism wants now, and has wanted for decades.

I also submit that more is involved in the feminist fable of “middle aged man discards his loyal wife” than the apex fallacy. I submit that is nothing less than projection on the part of feminists. They project onto men the behavior of feminist-inspired women.

As others have pointed out, no fault / men’s fault / his fault divorce makes the marriage “contract” into nothing of the sort. Suppose that in 1/4 of all automobile sales, the dealership could at any time during the first 5 years of ownership decide that, well, you may love your car, but you don’t love it enough – and so they would just come to wherever the care is (home, work, anywhere) and drive it off. If you had stuff in it, too bad, it’s gone. And as a bonus, if the car was bought on a loan, you are legally required to keep on paying. But don’t try to go to the dealership, or get near your car – if you do, that’s harassment and you go to jail. If you want to try to keep your car, you get to go to “car court”, a court made up entirely of judges from the automobile dealer industry.

Now, who would buy a car, given those odds? (Some may ask where I got 1/4 or .25 or 25%, it is easy: probability of divorce = 40% or .4, probability of woman initiated divorce = 60% or .6, p(divorce) * p(woman-initiated) = .24 and I rounded that up to .25 for ease in writing.)

Oh, and what kind of “contract” is it where Party B can unilaterally break the contract and take assets from Party A at any time, for no cause, eh?

I was on an economics site and the topic of trucking jobs came up (don’t ask how). Interestingly a commenter was in the trucking business. He said that trucking jobs are massively effected by alimony/child support wage garnishment. Truckers can pretty easily get hired in a new state and start working right away. Meanwhile, it takes the government a long time to start garnishing wages in each new state. So they take jobs until the garnishment starts and they quit and move to a new state.

The study authors were probably wise to use the examples of men engaging in the abuse of marriage practices outlined in the study as well as emphasizing the women’s SMP decline in the conclusion. In our culture, to have any impact, a study would necessarily have to appeal to a wide variety of women…who quite obviously do not care about anything else.

No fault divorce needs to go. What needs to be in place is a view that women are the legal equal of men. Who ever wants out ,”there’s the door” What makes divorce so attractive is the continuation of payment from the other party for years. Either through the children or alimony. They also have sitiation’s where the husband has to pay the wife’s attorny’s fee’s. Also family law is used as a tool to vendictively just beat up your husband. All perfectly legal and enforced at taser and gun point.
The sad thing or as I should say knowing your “Game” thing (female psychology) about it is these horror stories will not do a damn thing to change the attitudes of women at all. These stories are for men to hear and understand. The changes to family law will only occur as men give up marriage and women pick up on the reasons why. Those same men need to change the law (women aren’t) and the majority voters women will just let it happen. (it will still be a man”s fault)

That’s an interesting angle. Has the divorce industry been making noise about moving garnishment of wages to the federal arena, under the usual guise of “reform”? It wouldn’t surprise me for a moment, but I don’t have much skin in the game, so I may have easily overlooked it.

Dal, have you considered the reason most women get married to for the security, and the reason most men is for the sex? This I know is a gross oversimplification, but I think it holds up under what we understand about Game – survival of women and her children depend on finding a strong provider (confusion exists since “Alpha” traits appealing to women are easy to fake in the modern world), while men desire to mate with a pretty woman (good genes) who will take care of the children while following his lead (submissive).

If you establish that the motivations for marriage are thus different for men and women, it’s quite easy to see why women will more often initiate divorce than men: If men want sex they can easily get it outside of marriage, while a woman does not similarly have that option (imagine the ridiculousness of a woman “cheating” on her husband not by having sex with another man, but allowing another man to pay the mortgage one month). When a man tires of his wife, he would not need to divorce, and given the negative consequences of it will probably try to avoid it. When a woman tires of her husband, she would be far more likely to initiate a divorce, as long as she can be assured of financial protection anyway.

I only discuss this because you constantly bring up the fact that most divorces are initiated by women, and I specualte this is not due to their moral failings as a sex, but rather the different motivations they have in relationships in general. The only way to really reduce divorce is to change the law to make women less able to aquire their husbands’ resources after divorce. If all divorce were no fault, but alimony and child support were reduced to nominal levels, that would no doubt drastically reduce the divorce rate.

“It is already extremely attractive to women, given how much more women want marriage than men.”

Actually it is the reverse. Ever the optimistic sex, men are slightly more positive on marriage than women.

@ MarkyMark wrote:

“What does it say about women that they ALWAYS initiate divorce twice as often as men?”

What does it say about men, when we know what the odds are in a marriage yet still persist anyway?

@ Helen:

Re: abolishing marriage to abolish man-at-fault:

“That makes as much sense as getting rid of cars to end car crashes.”

Not really. It is as easy as abolishing the three-way polyandrous government marriage contract. Marriage would still exist, it would be returned back to the Church. Which I daresay would do a far better job of regulating the spiritual angle to marriage than the government.

It’s important to note the notion of the divorce fantasy as told by the mainstream media. The divorce fantasy meshes quite well with the “men suck” meme. The scenario goes something like this:

1. Wife consumes the emotional porn that tells her that her husband is awful because, well, he owns a penis.
2. Wife spends time with her circle of toxic friends who all complain bitterly about their husbands or are already divorced.
3. Wife starts consuming the emotional pornography of the divorce fantasy and believes her life will be so much better without that awful man hanging around.
4. Wife learns about divorce theft through those toxic friends.
5. Wife files for divorce, perhaps with nefarious tactics, perhaps not. Regardless, she files.

I only discuss this because you constantly bring up the fact that most divorces are initiated by women, and I specualte this is not due to their moral failings as a sex, but rather the different motivations they have in relationships in general. The only way to really reduce divorce is to change the law to make women less able to aquire their husbands’ resources after divorce. If all divorce were no fault, but alimony and child support were reduced to nominal levels, that would no doubt drastically reduce the divorce rate.

That thieves steal because it is easy and profitable doesn’t change the fact that they are thieves. Any man or woman who breaks such a solemn promise is committing a grievous moral failing, much more so if they are willing to sell their children’s future out for current gain.

But your basic point that the system shouldn’t reward the immoral is correct. First we have to get past all of the white knights who wish to deny that theft is occurring in the first place, or that it is indeed a moral failing. Calling the immoral out for what it is would actually be a very helpful first step.

I still don’t think no-fault divorce is really the problem here though. I’ve said on this blog before: the real issue are the incentives attached to divorce, namely presumed mother physical custody. Presumed mother custody is the most reliable predictor of divorce rates by county in America. If that is eliminated, I believe the divorce problem largely resolves itself.

I don’t think any woman should be compelled to remain married to a man she no longer wants to be with—whatever her reasons. It is far better for her, the husband and the children that she leave the marriage than for everyone to remain yoked to someone so frivilous and dangerously unhappy. But she shouldn’t be able to benefit in any way from breaking the contract—unless she can prove fault on the part of the husband (ie, abuse, infidelity, drug-use, failure to provide, etc).

2. Wife spends time with her circle of toxic friends who all complain bitterly about their husbands or are already divorced.
…
4. Wife learns about divorce theft through those toxic friends.

The toxic friends are an interesting, and damaging, phenomenon. A key understanding of women is that their social status is based on the man in their life. For all the fish/bicycle baloney, what kind of guy they could land deterines where they rank with their friends. Another key understanding of women is that they are more petty and jealous than men. Seeing a “friend” higher up the ladder in her social circle is at least as likely to make a woman jealous as it is to make her happy.

So, if one woman in a social circle takes the EPL bait and dumps her husband to go find her Secret Millionaire Handyman, she at first tries to avoid losing status by braying loudly about how much fun she’s going to have and all the exciting men she’ll be slutting it up with meeting. Soon enough that doesn’t work out and she’s lonely and collecting cats. If a guy made that kind of colossal mistake, he’d be inclined to warn his buddies away from it. “Don’t make the same mistake I did,” he’d say. His status isn’t based on his girlfriend or wife, it’s based on a bazillion other things and it costs him nothing if his friends are happily married.

But a woman, she has a primitive social incentive to have her friends damage their relationships. For one thing, it makes another man available! But even if nothing of that sort ever happened, at the very least her friend would drop a few notches in the social scale. In a civilized society, a big part of culture is devoted to squelching those negative incentives. The shame handed out to sluts and homewreckers for example. But we don’t do that these days, because we’re increasingly uncivilized.

So the first woman to go EPL becomes a toxic tumor in the circle of friends. In a bygone age, her remaining married friends would have been compelled to excommunicate her from their society. Not so today, so she remains, and – wicked witch like – subconsciously poisons the lives around her.

I think you are right that the incentive of presumed custody and child support is the biggest single issue. I’m more hopeful than most here that eventually we will see some change here. From what I have read states are already nibbling on it on the margins. The change may be glacial but I think it is and will continue to move in the right direction.

On your second point regarding women being forced to stay if not happy, I agree from a legal perspective. You also appear to suggest having two paths to divorce. One looks at fault, the other does not; those who wish to be rewarded for divorcing should have to take the at fault (or consensual) route and have the burden of proof if not consensual. This makes sense to me. Where I disagree is those who wish to say that morally it is not an issue. Honestly today this includes the vast majority of Christians, regardless of the lip service they pay about what the bible says about marriage and divorce. If marriage doesn’t hold any moral weight, we really should abolish the concept and just call it boyfriend and girlfriend. Once we acknowledge that truth, most will also see the fact that marriage is needed as a family structure to raise children.

I know making moral judgments makes people very uncomfortable, including almost all Christians. But by claiming it really isn’t a big moral deal we are harming all parties involved, not just men. There is no easy way to undo a marriage once it is done. The whole premise is that it is for life, and to allow for cooperation to achieve life long goals.

Dal, very well put. Wives stealing through state approved means is no less a sin than a man having sex outside of his marriage. Women get a financial incentive to steal, constant bombardment of media portraying their theft as not only morally neutral, but actually morally positive, and indeed they are presented with a reality so warped that their sin is called more moral than if they had virtuously honored their commitment, and we wonder why so many choose to divorce!

I have mentioned this to you before but one reason I continue to come back here is I get good ideas about understanding what my wife is faced with, and how to conteract it. I’ve become almost as adept as you at spotting such messages in media, and whenever I do I point out to her the problems which have been glossed over by the story she’s watching. Sex in the City became an open question of which of those women would end up with satisfying relationships as they aged, and usually it was just a simple observation on my part whch would trigger her to realize how ridiculous the whole thing was. “Hmmm, Samantha has a young stud in her bed this week. In real life, how do you think she’d do with such hotties against some 20 year old thing?” Her hampster goes quietly into that good night when I put it that way…

I think it’s important to call people out on their bad choices and behaviour, but to prevent theft, I think we’re usually better off locking up our valuables than convincing thieves not to steal. It’s great to call them out on it, but as long as the reality remains, I think we’d see faster results by preventing the gain from such behaviour than futilely trying to prevent it.

I don’t think any woman should be compelled to remain married to a man she no longer wants to be with—whatever her reasons. It is far better for her, the husband and the children that she leave the marriage than for everyone to remain yoked to someone so frivilous and dangerously unhappy

BS. Absolutely she should be compelled to stick it out and try and find happiness within the life she’s made for herself. This notion that we should all just walk away from our troubles whenever we’re feeling blue and let someone else clean up the mess is hoirrible. It is not far better, it is in fact far worse for the husband and the children if a woman skips out on her family commitments in order to go chase some cockamaimie unobtainable dream.

What if he’s abusive/an alcoholic/cheating on her I hear you sputtering. Sure, sure, there are cases where it is a good thing for her to leave. They’re rare. They are what we would call an “at-fault divorce.” That’s not what drives most no-fault divorces.

No-fault divorce is unconstrained hypergamy. A woman marries a guy in his late 20’s who seems to be an up-and-commer, starting to make his way in a promising career – a proto-AMOG. Ten years later, with two or three kids as distractions at home, he’s starting to hit obstacles and roadblocks in his professional life. Not everyone can make VP or Senior Partner. The struggles are getting harder, and the stakes higher, and age is begining to take the edge off him. Not only does he have less energy than he did ten hears ago, he’s no longer the “promising young gun”. Age has converted him into the known veteran quantity, which isn’t as interesting to the corporate hierarchy as is the rookie with less skill but more potential. But, our guy has reached a point that’s pretty good – a decent salary that pays for a decent lifestyle. So he drops out of the Alpha struggles and becomes a solid Beta.

Oops, suddenly he’s not the guy she married any more. Of course, she’s not the woman he married either – age has taken the luster off both of them. Civilized adults recognize this – life will hand out dissapointments and only a fool throws out the baby with the bathwater. But sticking it out is hard, and most of us – men and women – need a little encouragement to do it. Telling a woman to “follower her heart” or whatever other nonsense passes for wisdom these days just undermines her chances at actually having a happy life.

Make marriage an explicit legal contract, with clearly defined duties and obligations, as well as exit clauses. A pre-nup on steroids. Dispense with any pretenses, treat it like a business merger.

“But that’s not romaaaaaaaaaaaaaantic!” What’s so romantic about needing a marriage license from the state and registering as a singular legal entity for tax collection, which is done already?

The tricky part would be children, particularly those yet to be born. You can’t bind a non-participating 3rd party, which is why child support provisions in pre-nups are essentially null and void on their face. Require a lawyer independent of the husband or the wife’s be present to represent any future kids, and assure that their client(s) will be provided for financially and emotionally. Their mandate should include making sure support payments are fair and truly spent on the kids, that visitation is upheld, that the kids aren’t used as hostages, and so forth. Not much different from child protection service drones (or at least the theoretical ideal) I guess, but my understanding is that they’re generally shielded by the state bureaucracy from legal repercussions for bad decisions, either truly accidental or prejudiced (ie. full-blown feminist father hating). In this scenario, the kid’s legal rep could be penalized or disbarred for colluding with one parent or the other, or wearing The-mother-can-do-no-wrong blinders. But I’m rambling at this point.

“TFH says:
I interpret this to mean that you would recommend that most men do not marry.
We know that pre-nups are only partial protection at best, and cannot stop a man’s children from being taken from him.
So by your logic, most men should think twice or thrice before marrying.”

I was referencing an earlier post by dalrock, but I didn’t actually make my analogy all that great.
My actual point was that calling women out on divorce theft isn’t likely to change all that much, and as long as they will do it, we’re better off structuring the system to remove the rewards, rather than just hoping people will change.

But as long as the system remains as it does, I do think men should think long and hard. Not not marry – but take a really good unromantic think before doing it.
I would also suggest marrying in one’s church or before one’s friends/family, but not in the state (what legitimacy has the state in the social contract of marriage), and living in a place which does not allow retroactive assumption of common-law unions.
But while that will help with actual alimony and property, that still won’t help a man keep his children and avoid obscene ‘child support’ arrangements.

There are two major changes that need to occur to the “marriage contract”. The first is that we need to install shared equal parenting laws. There should be a presumed 50 / 50 % split in custody. This would hit two birds with one stone. Firstly, it would negate the need for excessive child support because no one parent would monopolize custody. Each parent would just pay the child’s expenses in their own household. At 50/50 there is no need to compensate the other spouse. Second, the child(ren) could not be used as a shield by either of the parents (of course I am talking about the mothers) in order not to work. When mom gets custody of the children 90% it is much harder for her to work or have a meaningful career which puts pressure on the non-custodial parent to earn more than they would otherwise.

The second major change is to end alimony. Instead, we need to go to a temporary spousal support which might last 3 – 5 years max! The benefits that a spouse receives during a marriage should not last beyond that marriage! That would be like claiming men had a lifetime claim for sex or housekeeping services from their soon to be divorced wives.

Another idea while I’m at it, is that the party that files should be the one that leaves the house unless agreed otherwise.

“My actual point was that calling women out on divorce theft isn’t likely to change all that much, and as long as they will do it, we’re better off structuring the system to remove the rewards, rather than just hoping people will change.”
Now you’re talking Kai. The only way it is going to happen.

I think that some things are just in a few people’s nature and are difficult to help. But more broadly, people respond to incentives. Society reflects what it chooses to incentivize people for – our society attempts to deter people from theft, and murder, but rewards them for unilaterally divorcing their partner. It speaks to the worth of the society.

I would remove unilateral no-fault divorce. I would permit no-fault divorce if both people agree, as there’s only so much I’m willing to legislate in opposition of consenting adults, but that (as mentioned in the post) puts the power in the hands of the spouse that wants to maintain the commitment – as it should be.
Any unilateral divorce should be fault-based only. If you file, it is presumed to be your fault unless you can prove otherwise. I think the system should default to give marital property and children to the faulted party unless the couple can come up with their own mutually acceptable agreement.

But that’s on a societal level and honestly, it’s pretty unrealistic. On an individual level, I simply urge people to think long and hard, and do as much negotiating as they can on their own.

My actual point was that calling women out on divorce theft isn’t likely to change all that much, and as long as they will do it, we’re better off structuring the system to remove the rewards, rather than just hoping people will change.

@Kai, I would think no-fault should not be legal if there are children involved or if one spouse is seeking custody. If you look at marriage as a contract, then I think it can be disolved by mutual consent if there are no inoocent parties to be injured. Alimony/children/child support introduces innocent parties and therefore divorce should only be allowed with cause in such situations.

Of course this is no real solution, as lawyers would take a sliver of what is considered to be “At fault” and expand that definition to include anything, over time. Let’s say that “At fault” is considered to be only adultury. Sooner or later this would expand on include alienation of affection, or if the husband looks at dirty websites, or if a pretty neighbor moves in next door! The term will be dumbed down as to lose all meaning, that’s what lawyers do. But still it’s better than no fault/alimony/child support theft we now see.

To some extent, yes. However, if a woman senses that she’s judged by another woman, then she’ll just dump her and find other friends, so what you’re saying is unlikely to work.

[D: I was thinking more of judgment by men. But women in the social hierarchy matter very much as well. The ladies at the church could have a very strong impact on Christian women if they chose to speak up.]

I’m just spitballing here, but what if no-fault divorce was banned for couples who have minor children? I think this would drastically change the landscape of marriage and relationships as we know it. Divorce theft through child support would effectively be a thing of the past.

“D: I was thinking more of judgment by men. But women in the social hierarchy matter very much as well. The ladies at the church could have a very strong impact on Christian women if they chose to speak up.”

Yes, and I think it’s important to understand the law will follow – not lead – culture. We got our current bad law becuse we let our culture degrade. Of course, bad law is now also contributing to cultural rot, but a death spiral is not inevitable. We can turn it around, but it’ll be by reclaiming the culture first, before changing the laws.

That’s the biggest mistake the cultural Right has made in recent decades – responding to the Left’s legal/government assault by trying to fight the culture war in the courts and legislatures. Meanwhile the Left fought it where it mattered – in our cultural institutions.

Dan, I agree totally with the points you bring up. Sadly, I don’t see a solution except on the individual level.

“Dalrock says:
I agree that we need to change the system to remove the rewards, but strongly disagree that social disapproval of divorce theft wouldn’t have a powerful and immediate impact. Women are very much deterred by social disapproval. Rusty’s comment on my slutwalk post is an excellent example.”

I was not thinking broadly enough. I was thinking in general of people calling out a woman, and not seeing much change. I agree that widespread social disapproval would be very effective at changing behaviours in women.
But when it comes down to that, I think we have a better chance with changing the law…

Actually, in China, divorce laws are tilted towards men. Dalrock recently mentioned that if men would abuse these laws you would expect a spike in divorces around the time husband gets close to their maximum income, and/or the wife is loosing their beauty. Actually, that is what lots of men take advantage of in China who reached a high-status level: either via divorce, or having (un-)knowingly several further girl-friends (kind of polygamy). Often these men do not want to have kids because their younger girl-friends do not want to take care of them.

The gender imbalance brought about by feticide/infanticide of a generation of girls is fixing any power Chinese men have. If that is the case, it won’t last long outside of a rare couple of particularly high-status men.

Actually, that is what lots of men take advantage of in China who reached a high-status level: either via divorce, or having (un-)knowingly several further girl-friends (kind of polygamy). Often these men do not want to have kids because their younger girl-friends do not want to take care of them.

While I don’t doubt this could happen in theory, keep in mind this is what women claim is going on in the US and the UK. I just proved it false with data. So when I hear the same claim for another country, lacking data, I’m understandably skeptical. Do you have any data here? I’m not talking about the kind of anecdote that is bandied about to make the same claims in the US and the UK, but statistical proof? Are women in China more likely to divorce as they become older?

I don’t have statistical data. I do not have population data of divorce with respect to age. Custody and alimony is mostly decided in favour of the richer person in the marriage. Combined with big difficulties of female remarriage, and strong preference for virginity perceived options also look dim for women.

I have seen this paper but I do not think it is too useful for interpretation beyond some refined basic summary statistics. They study the divorce and remarriage rate which are both quite low, though increasing over time. Unsurprisingly, they find they both correlated. And then they run a simple regression analysis for both response variables based on predictors such as GDP, education etc. But otherwise the paper is not very informative who drives divorce and why, what are the laws, how each gender drives their biological reproductive imperative, how culture influences female submissiveness etc.

Since we have just proven the same claim to be a myth for the countries we have data for, why are you so convinced the claim is true for a country we have no data for? It feels to me like a game where one side gets to make unsubstantiated claims over and over again, and each time the other refutes it with data we move to another country with the same claim.

It is a bit like disproving an urban legend. No matter how many examples of it being false I provide to you, what will stop you from presenting more heart felt examples which happened to a friend of a friend? I guess my point is, why are we even talking about this? If you had data, it would be another matter entirely.

Dalrock, as I just said this is the impression I get about the reasons by talking to 20+ Chinese guys and women. However, you may always argue my sample size is rather small, not representative in the way that most of them are from the big cities, just anecdotes. I do not claim with certainty China is any different but it may be. And I try to find out whether it is the case. My goal is not prevent you from proving me wrong due to lack of data. I am just curious. Either way would be fine for me given I got a genuine answer.

But what I am trying to understand how people interact differently in China, how the laws are different etc. which drives behaviour including marriage. For example, recently, you mentioned when men would follow their biological imperatives there would be a higher divorce rate in middle age which does not seem to be the case in USA. However, from the Chinese anecdotes, it seems income is a main driver for men to look for concubine in middle age.

Just to clarify, I’m not saying these things don’t ever happen, or that you aren’t hearing about it from many different sources. What I’m saying is we hear the same thing in the US and the UK, and the data shows it is really about the Apex fallacy. People notice when a man does such a thing, because it fits the popular narrative. Plus women especially only tend to notice the alphas. The majority of men are very often invisible to them. So in the US and the UK at least, the reality is that women are driving divorce rates all along the age spectrum. At the same time, go to any random forum on the internet and ask what drives divorce in the US and UK, and a very loud group will tell you emphatically that it is older men dumping their loyal wives for a younger model, or older successful men cheating on their wives, or men abusing their wives. I’ve shown over several different posts that these aren’t the driving factors, but that won’t stop the conventional wisdom from remaining what it is.

Just like the old folk tale, it is entirely possible that there is actually a wolf. And it isn’t that I don’t believe wolves exist. But it has been cried so often that I’m not inclined to take it overly seriously without hard data.

As far as I understand the apex fallacy it is related to the fact that only the behaviour of the top X percent of men is visible to the women. However, the question is what that X is which may be different for Western cultures and China. As far as I know from history it has been very popular for government officials and business men (which are highly connected in China) to have concubines. A friend of mine said more than one women becomes popular at about £5K pounds earnings per month in coastal cities in the East. I think the average annual salary there is £5-6K. Under these assumptions, I guess to infer knowledge about X then we would need to know about the income density to calculate the cumulative density in the tail of men with the respective monthly income.

Is 5-6k the average or the median salary? If it’s the average, from what I know of China, probalby less than 20% of men earn more than that. X may still be the very tip of the pyramid, even if your friend’s starting point for polygamy is correct.

My time in Beijing was interesting. I don’t pretend that I really got to understand the culture or what exactly goes on there, and Beijing is not one of the coastal cities. But what I sensed was a culture without much regard for fairness or sympathy for those lower on the totem pole. It was a combination of “out time has come and we deserve whatever we can grab” and “we really don’t belong here, we better enjoy what we can before someone kicks us out of the Rich Guys Club.” Plus, I’m fairly certain that Mao’s – ahem – reforms did not strengthen families. Every one of the younger generation I worked with (20-something technical professionals) seemed happiest when someone else was suffing mild humiliation.

It would not surprise me if BIG MAN-ism (as Whiskey might say) is rampant in China, with a handful at the top monopolizing the women without much concern.

Jack, it is the average salary I think. If you are lower class you are likely to pretty much getting kicked around. Middle class is kind of neutral. If you money you have lots of rights, for example if you want to divorce you most likely win the legal case, get custody, don’t pay any alimony, the woman gets more or less nothing. For an anecdote regarding the legal climate in China, I recently heard about a case where a guy killed three others in a car accident but he was let off by the police immediately because he mentioned the connection to the right people.

After 30+ years of marriage, I can say for me it was much more beneficial on all levels for my husband–and he is a nice guy. He just can’t change at all. He can’t adjust to the fact that the kids are gone and sitting around the house is boring. I don’t want to go fishing all the time, or cutting wood that we don’t “need”. I would like to travel and have him do at least a minimal amount of our massive estimated (ours and trust and custodial for kids paperwork.) I file 9 ES tax returns, and 18 yearly returns on average. I pay all our bills and keep all our insurance on our properties and tax bills and health insurance paid. I pay everything. He just walks the dog, fishes, leaves his dirty clothes everywhere, doesn’t clean the bathroom after himself (we have a jacuzzi tub that gets awful after he uses soap in it) he works in his studio, sleeps, drinks beer, and smokes pot (legal for chronic pain–I have chronic pain too, but don’t smoke) and watches TV. He visits his friends who do the same thing. It is so boring I can’t stand it.

Maybe women initiate divorce more often because of the circumstances. I don’t believe women want to leave their marriages; but when faced with repeated infidelity (Tiger, Arnold, Ashton, and many others), abuse, lying, etc. – women need to leave to protect their children. And women do lose in divorce – I lost the family home, my financial standing, my self-esteem, etc. I didn’t want to leave but my husband would not go to counseling for his continual physical abuse. And my therapist said if I don’t remove myself and children from the situation – I could end up like OJ
Simpson’s ex-wife.

We have the same rule in most states. Property brought into the marriage is not marital property and is not subject to being divided equally during a divorce. So if a woman moves into a house the man has sole title to and subsequently he marries her without putting her on the title, it’s remains entirely his house – in most states.

Maybe women initiate divorce more often because of the circumstances. I don’t believe women want to leave their marriages; but when faced with repeated infidelity (Tiger, Arnold, Ashton, and many others), abuse, lying, etc. – women need to leave to protect their children. And women do lose in divorce – I lost the family home, my financial standing, my self-esteem, etc.

In surveys of women who divorced the most frequent types of reasons given are things like “grew apart”, “lack of communication after awhile”, “no longer feeling in love” — all are covers for I’m not feeeeling it so much anymore, and want to go hunting for my next new love, next serial monogamy.

Marriage in it’s current form is a goverment backed entitlement program for the female half of the population. The leading cause of divorce is marriage and no man should enter into marriage until the laws have changed and he longer forgoes all his rights and earnings simply because one class has been over empowered by the failurement…..er I mean government.

Why isn’t anyone mentioning the 40% of women who, it’s acknowledged, DON’T file for divorce? How is taking away their children and giving them to the husband who abandoned them, and then driving them into poverty by denying them alimony, child support, and housing, going to resemble anything like justice?
Blanket prescriptions for every single case don’t work. Cases need to be reviewed on a case by case basis. The only true comment on this thread is that no-fault divorce is an abomination. There is always fault, and as the article pointed out, one party seeking to exploit the other. However, it is not always women, or always men

I’m just an observer to the FI. And, if there’s a “more important word in the red pill sites” (sic), then I don’t know it.

From my experience (young) women don’t have a plan or plans. So, they do what makes them feel good. No thought required. They are like rudderless ship’s on the open water. Adrift on “tingles” don’t’cha’know.

From my experience (young) women don’t have a plan or plans. So, they do what makes them feel good. No thought required. They are like rudderless ship’s on the open water. Adrift on “tingles” don’t’cha’know.

That is the absence of God.

The more secular your culture, the more it makes sense to live for the day and whatever pleasure you get from that day. That is your ultimate moral underpining since you could be dead tomorrow and that is just… nothingness. Its just that this secular realization was found culturally acceptable for women first. It is only recently when society started to say it okay for men to act the same way MGTOW. But feminists are putting up one hell of a fight here….

I wonder how many of these women browbeat their husbands into submission.

Besides, having a guy around is good when stuff needs to be fixed. If he is submissive, why divorce?”

Most married men in western industrialized societies are submissive beta males. Marriage is slavery for men, and women are their masters. See Esther Vilars’ book: The Manipulated Man. Men are unknowingly willing slaves (workhorses). If a woman has a compliant, supplicating husband that serves her to her liking, why should she divorce? Marriage is entirely beneficial for the woman, but nothing but servitude, liability, responsibility and obligation for the man to the woman. Men are heavily socially programmed to desire marriage, wife and children – it is how he is defined as a man. Marriage is the epitome of being masculine for men. If he is not married, and providing for a woman, then he is not considered a real man.

Hello I have gotten in a predicament of consequential actions dealing in marital assets/property I am in a relationship with my girlfriend who is trying to finalize a divorce only problem is the furniture is in storage and i am in charge of keeping watch over it while she is getting place and a personally known figure has decided to throw the furniture out to the curb what are the consequences of the marital assets/property being thrown away by the third party who’s negatively interfered in the divorce

I don’t know where people are coming up with automatic mother custody. Where I’m at, judges favor dads or a shared custody time.

I got screed over after fifteen years of marriage and raising five kids as a stay at home mom. Judge told me they were limiting my alimony as I was young enough to work.

So now I’m struggling as a CNA, and attempting nursing school. After he left me at the curb when I began trying to go back to school because we were so broke.

And he alienated my kids. It’s taken me a long time to undo that. And he left me. I did nothing to deserve that. In spite of that, I remain faithful to my views before Good. I live chastely, do not date, attend my church, and attempt to live a life pleasing to God. And for all that, I get mocked by my own kids and Coworkers. Kids ask me when they get a step dad. I say only if your dad passed away and Good brings someone into my life.

Pray for me.

[D: Welcome Brenda. I will indeed pray for you. Our family courts are evil tools of destruction. Please note that this site has a fairly uncommon comment policy.]